Variations on a Theme: Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel
BY HANIF ABDURRAQIB
I asked to be swallowed & never asked to be saved. in any direction the wind blows, it
drags you closer to the day of judgement. in every vicious note, the wind stalks the
soul, which is a kiss away from becoming ash. vanity is the ship upon which all other
sins set sail. I flex in forgiving light. I know my angles. I age backwards. only child of
a wretched season. the sky, weary of the horrible racket made by all our gospels & all
our dreaming, rotted with grey, closing in on itself. still, I’ll take it. I have imagined all
of the ways there are to die & the mirror says I survive them all. too pretty to get
gone. I have a memory of the sun catching a stained glass window & spitting the red
of a saint’s robe onto the concrete where someone had sprayed painted I hope all my
niggas find heaven. I have a memory of my grandmother smoking a pack a day & flicking
cigarette ash onto a small mirror on her nightstand. the soul makes its own reflection.
I swear the storm took everyone except me this time. so pretty I am left here to nurse
the chaos of my loneliness. I did not summon the den or the lion but I did summon
the moan of the vacant heart, which led to my wandering in the dark. no one asks
Jonah if there was peace before the panic, for a moment, sharp & thin as the thread
between leaving & staying. when, inside of the whale, he called out seeking mercy &
what was returned to him was his own voice. the forgiveness he prayed for, stained
with red & tucked inside the echo of his prayers.
